Sonny and Gerlari were rising to the surface again, fast enough to wonder how he wasn’t getting the bends like some deep sea diver, considering all the heat and atmospheric pressure differentials they were moving through. He decided he wouldn’t miss his engineering aptitudes when they were gone. The physiological challenges to his existence, which he was never conscious of before, while interesting enough, took thinking time away from more important matters that Sonny was far better suited to.
SEVENTY-NINE
THE FOR-SAK-EN ZOO WORLD, ORIGINE
THE PLANET’S SURFACE
Leopard Lady. That’s what they’d called her on the Lucky Streak where they captured her. And then they tortured her for her secrets, the location of her people’s world, the nature of their psychic powers, how those abilities had evolved. Her persecutors hadn’t even bothered to get her name. And in the end she’d told them everything. Sonny and his people were very good at what they did.
She still bore the scars from Puma’s fangs digging into her skull.
And now, to add insult to injury, they’d beamed her and everyone on her planet to this new world, where they would be farmed like she-animals for their milk; the milk in this case would be their psychic juices. That they would have no choice in the matter and that they would never escape were already foregone conclusions. They would accept their lot and they would be happy about it. Even the thought of suicide was off the table. Already she could feel the emanations of the psychic amplifier nestled at the core of the planet ship known as Origine making sure she and her people settled happily into their new world. In another few days they would be positively gleeful to be here.
All because Voya chose the wrong party to help out. She should have known that her ability to cloak a galaxy-class destroyer singlehandedly was going to put her on someone’s radar. Her greed over the potential payoff—a lifetime supply of her favorite prey, which had grown short on Lerandra—had corrupted her and landed her in with the wrong people. Like attracts like; a psychic rule she knew all too well. She should have recognized her fate the second she chose her path. Part of her felt she deserved everything she’d experienced since, up to and including this latest horror. She was now single-handedly responsible for the downfall and psychic enslavement of her people.
Sonny would pay, if it was the last thing she did.
Even long after the impulse to retaliate had faded, thanks to Origine’s psychic amplifier, she would still recall the name of Leon DiSanti. She had been on the Lucky Streak just long enough to learn of him and the natural check on Sonny’s powers he represented. One day Leon would know; somehow, she would get the word to him. And something told her, he’d settle the score for her, and then some.
She’d been running on all fours since she got to Origine. Her people were the fastest runners on her world; they had to be to stay ahead of the bigger cats. Saran endurance was also far greater than most apex predators, because often as soon as they’d shed one predator higher up the food chain, another would be on them.
But this world was different. They couldn’t just run faster until the ones chasing them had tired and lost their scent. These predators never tired. If that wasn’t creepy enough… They never bored of the pursuit. They didn’t just switch to easier prey once they found out how hard the Saran were to chase and corner. That feature meant better sport to their four-legged tormentors, many of whom could switch to two-legged ambulation via double-jointed knees as well. The Origine predators could work solo or coordinate in packs. Even across species.
And worst of all: they were super smart. That alone erased the edge the Saran had had on Lerandra, which they’d taken the precaution to evolve over so many centuries.
Her people could bound up trees faster than tree dwelling species. They could scale sheer cliffs and rocky slopes better than mountain animals adapted for the precarious footholds of such steep carapaces with scant footing. But nowhere they went could they lose their stalkers.
And they were being driven.
The bastards were herding them toward something.
Her people had keen night vision, able to see in the darkness nearly as well as in the light, and for great distances. That’s why Voya knew they were being driven toward the edge of this butte.
This was a world of buttes separated by huge chasms there was simply no jumping. And she could already perceive with her third eye, the energy chakra in the center of her forehead that she used for her psychic seeing, what she couldn’t register with her physical eyes. Not only could the Saran not vault from butte to butte, those chasms were so deep there would be no surviving them if the Saran jumped and fell. And even if they did somehow manage to get up after the fall, there were different predators awaiting them down below. Every bit as scary.
They had no choice now.
They had to use their ability to project phantoms at their pursuers. It was their only hope to turn the tables on them. With any luck, they would compel the bastards chasing them over the cliffs, leaving the Saran to enjoy their plateau in relative peace.
Voya snarled her signal to the others, psychically communicating with them her intent. The Saran would congregate in a group, forcing the packs hunting them to converge as well. With any luck, if their pursuers proved only partially immune to the phantoms, considering how immune they were to the rest of the Saran tricks, they might turn on one another for the right to slaughter their prey. The Saran, moreover, would be more powerful once united and synced to the same brainwave patterns.
If the Saran’s psychic abilities failed them, the one final defense they would have is that the packs would be forced to contend with great losses if they charged the inner circle of Saran, once cornered. Most animals didn’t want to risk being even slightly wounded for fear of becoming targets for other predators. And fighting upright, the Saran could make use of their daggers, and a slew of weapons they’d evolved with time to supplement their own talons and teeth, which should also give these bastards pause.
To congregate, the Saran had to escape being encircled individually. But to do that they just had to run straight toward one of their encirclers and leap over their heads. The Saran were surprisingly strong considering their lithe physiques, something their tormentors always underestimated.
They were finally all together, all facing outwards at the circle of predators. So many species congregated before them, like tribal clans that had united for war against the Saran, unprovoked.
None of it made any sense. You studied your prey, learned their weaknesses, and their strengths, before charging in. What gave these bastards such confidence?
The Saran released their phantoms on their enemies. Beasts no less formidable. And while their bites and their claw marks were every bit as intangible as they were, the amount of psychic power being generated meant those gashes and slash marks would be real enough.
The Saran attackers treated the Saran phantom projections as real, but cut through them with weapons of their own. The many clans of Origine switched to upright fighting with sharp blades as well, only their cutting instruments had evolved to combat psychic projections. That meant that somehow those knives and daggers functioned like acupuncture needles. In stabbing at the beast’s brains to find the one point that would kill them dead, they were stabbing at the psychic projecting components of the Saran’s brains. Something in the weapons they were using allowed them to key the specific psychic projection to the one or ones broadcasting the phantoms, even pinpointing the specific broadcasting regions of the brain.
The Saran had no choice but to stop psychically projecting. As those weapons would destroy the regions of their brains they depended on most. If they had not been unified as one, the stabbings might have been enough to kill individuals of their species already. Her people were crying out in agony as Voya declared a halt to the tactic.
The outward circle of attackers had not stopped their charge.
The Saran were done for. If any survived now, it would be because hand to
hand combat took too great a toll on the enemy to make it worth the price they had to pay for claiming their prize.
Voya didn’t like their odds. Not only were they outnumbered three to one, their adversaries had physiques that looked too well armored for the Saran cutting instruments to do much to.
Sonny materialized between the inner circle of Saran and the outer circle of Origine predators with his own entourage of dog-people in tow.
The sight of them brought both parties to a standstill.
Sonny spoke in words but also in psychic projections that were more the language of the locals and the Saran, projecting the images to go with those words, leaving no doubt of what he had in mind. He spoke of the dawning of a new day. “From here on out, you will not hunt each other as food, but mate with each other. Of course, if you cannot subdue your mate, and are killed for trying, that is your problem. But once the mating is complete, you will resume the hunt for another mating partner. Since we are looking to interbreed the locals with the Saran and with my own people, to mingle the three bloodlines, it will take the sperm of two bloodlines to impregnate a Saran female. It will take an Origine Apex predator male and a male of my species to impregnate an Origine female.
“Rest assured that your rambunctious ways will not be confined to rough sex,” he continued. “You will be allowed to develop your warriors’ prowess, just not against one another. We will be moving this world into solar systems whose destiny we wish to affect. Your psychic projecting abilities will be used to soften up these civilizations, to make them more amenable to my negotiations. Sometimes that will mean unrelenting war until they get the message, where you play both sides of the chessboard as the puppets dangling on your psychic strings. At other times you will engage in more subtle arts of warfare, which I and my people will teach you. We call that business and diplomacy. These kinds of wars are often more decisive than the ones where blood is shed.
“You all have evolved enough now to enjoy the mind games even more than the war games,” Sonny explained, “or rather, to appreciate how much war games are even more sports of the mind than the body.
“I and my people—but clones of the originals—will stay with you until our presence is no longer needed, because the next generation is on line, the product of the mating of the three bloodlines. Perhaps by then we will be little but food for the next generation who will turn as savagely upon us, devouring us as we once attempted to devour one another.
“Either way, let the mating begin.”
The three throngs, spellbound as much by Sonny’s words and thought projections as by the psychic amplifier at the core of the planet, threw themselves at one another, but this time to mate, and perhaps to kill if their partner wasn’t strong enough to claim his prize, before going on to mate again, and again.
Voya realized her will was being influenced even more by the psychic amplifier than by Sonny’s speech, but couldn’t help herself. History would play out just as he said it would.
The orgy spread far and wide as captors took away their captives where they could mate at length in peace.
Once all the females had been impregnated by two of the three bloodlines, and the seeds began to grow within them, the mothers would be more powerful still. With the three bloodlines coursing through their veins, they and their children would become the natural diplomats and businessmen of their three species, forging alliances, evolving them beyond primitive tribalism.
They and their children, once the children were old enough, would serve in a similar capacity when Sonny needed them to exert those influences on other worlds, leaving the males and the un-impregnated females to carry on as before, as mere warriors looking to stay alive. Some females would be barren, and so could hope for no other future; indeed, many would not want any other future.
Sonny, by remaining behind on the planet, at least in the incarnation of a clone, would mentor his budding class of diplomats and businessmen further in the ever-trickier arts of intergalactic negotiations. From this class would also be drawn the future spies and Special Forces that made up Sonny’s Shadow Warriors—the best of the best—thus allowing him to expand the reach of the Shadow Warriors, perhaps evolving them, as well, with the help of the Zalics crystals of this world.
Sonny had shown her all this, the future, the way of things to come, all by way of apology for what he’d done to her. He’d taken her as his own mate, and not by force, but taking her gently away by the hand. This, too, was by way of concessions made to her as retribution, because with his seed in her, her child would inherit the slot at the top of the food chain of masterminds in subterfuge that Sonny was breeding. He did not believe this could go far enough to repay her for what he’d subjected her to, so he promised her more. That she could spend the rest of her life looking to get the better of him; he would only respect her more for it, and he would train her in the fine arts of treachery so one day she very well might get the better of him.
And he made one more promise. He said he would negotiate with Mother and with Leon to give her eyes into alternative timelines, so she could see for herself how her people evolved without his ever interceding, versus how they evolved with his intercessions—in countless different ways in countless different timelines. If she or any of her people still felt that a better future awaited them in one of the other timelines, away from his influence, then Mother would beam them into those timelines.
She had to admit, he was one hell of a negotiator, very adept at making people offers they couldn’t refuse. And why did she suspect even from now that she and most of her people would not cease to flee this timeline into another? Because the Saran had remained a predator species. They were not as open to being civilized as many branches of humanoids that evolved upwards from so many more primitive lifeforms on other worlds by so many other means. All that mattered to the Saran was remaining at the top of the food chain. And for that reason, she wondered if any of her people would accept the out being offered them.
If Sonny represented one thing it was evolution along a predatory tangent. With time, and with the influence of the psychic amplifier at the core of Origine, she suspected that the other things he represented, they would come to accept as eagerly.
Her people weren’t evil by nature. It was a waste of energy. But she had misjudged Sonny. He wasn’t purely evil either, more a mix of good and evil at the service of enhancing his control. He knew enough that to simply oppress a people was to invite them to rebel. It was more a fine mix of carrots and sticks, rewards and punishments, slowly conditioning prey to be prey over time, for sheep to be sheep, to let the wolves do what the wolves did, secure their place at the top of the food chain.
Even as he penetrated her, he reassured her psychically that he would allow no other from his species to mate with her, and only the one of the Origines who, too, was the best of the best.
Voya felt a twinge of discomfort both from Sonny’s appendage, and from how well she was settling into her new fate.
EIGHTY
GYPSY GALAXY
ABOARD ONE OF THE TESTERN ASTEROID FIGHTERS
Simul’s people had been “gifted”—if that was the right word—a galaxy with little more than useless planetoids and asteroids. Even as asteroids went, they were asteroids of little value, few with precious rare-earths and metals worth mining. But enough of the asteroids and planetoids were hollow, womb worlds in which to incubate life. And so, there species had arisen, evolving along numerous tangents at once, since no two asteroids and no two planetoids posed exactly the same challenges.
For all that, Testerns all shared one thing in common, a savage, unrivaled ability to do more with less, and to perfect what limited technology they could procure to such exacting specifications that failure rate among Testern tools was close to zero, close enough that only a supercomputer could tally the number of digits past the decimal point where meaningful rounding off could begin.
Extremophiles, exotic rock-eating bacteria, fungi, and microbes had been
trained, and genetically modified from day one to turn common regolith into rare-earths that could be used in manufacturing. When products that were a composite of various materials and materials sciences failed, the source of the failure was isolated and stamped out, often by refining further the extremophiles ability to procure entire civilizations out of sheer dust.
Determined to turn a weakness into a strength, the Testerns communicated via Singularity technology across space-time the instant they were able to procure such technology. They did so to ensure everyone’s unique niche in their bizarre galacto-sphere was protected. Sooner or later someone would come knocking. And as there was little Testerns could do to truly defend themselves, they would befriend their enemies, do for them what no one else could—perfect their technologies further to specifications so exacting not even supercomputers could compare.
Still, the Testerns realized that some might still be tempted to take them over, if not for the useless bits of space rock they inhabited, then for their genius as peoples. So the Testerns set those extremophiles to work yet again, genetically modifying them further, this time to turn any one of those useless asteroids into a spaceship that could cloak and teleport. At the first sign of aggression they would scatter like dust in the wind to galaxies and universes far and wide. Some of those asteroid worlds might not escape whatever net an attacking civilization threw around them, but what would be lost would be the genius of the aggregate. No fool would dare waste a resource like that. No part could be captured from which the whole could be reproduced, moreover. Unless you could imprison an entire galaxy, the Testerns were unassailable.
Then along came The Collectors who could capture galaxies in a bottle.
To their credit, the Testerns had continued to deploy their primary evolutionary strategy, tweaking the tech of other civilizations for them, to make them more effective at waging war. And war was definitely what The Collectors were all about. They were so good at promoting it that many of the galaxies within the Menagerie were now specialized in one way or another for profiting at the expense of war, some serving as valuable conveyor belts in the supply chain, others…well, as it turned out as warfare evolves, much like as when nature evolves, new niches must be found for all life forms to continue to survive. The Testerns niche of hyperspecialization was actually one of innumerable niches, though their knack for precision remained the singularly most important. And while they weren’t immune to The Collectors, their strategy for repelling other galaxies within the Menagerie held as well today as ever.
Moving Earth Page 66
